


Miles To Go

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [81]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 1X13 (The Parting of the Ways), 3X11 (Utopia), 3X12 (The Sound of Drums), 3X13 (Last of the Time Lords), Angst, F/M, Implied Relationships, Introspection, M/M, POV Jack Harkness, Regrets, Retrospective, Tenth Doctor Era, reposting old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 23:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: Sometimes the pain of experience leads you to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons.





	Miles To Go

_But I have promises to keep_   
_And miles to go before I sleep_

You’re a decent man, or you at least believe yourself to be. You’ve also had plenty of time on your hands to think about what you’d say if you ever got back to the Doctor and he asked you to travel with him again. Since the Game Station, he's been a completely new man. Literally so, in his case; and, of course, that's half the problem.

So your decision, when he asks you, is already made. As for as you can tell, the Doctor ran from you because you were ‘wrong’ and you doubt he gave the slightest consideration to what might happen to you in consequence. You don’t think you’ll ever entirely forgive him for that.

_God knows what he told Rose ... that tendency to withhold stuff must have come back and bit him on the arse at some point, surely? Just because he was in love with her – and that was very clear, and not just because he warned me off – he didn’t have the right to lie to her._

On that first evening, when Martha goes for chips after you’ve all realised the truth about ‘Harold Saxon’ and his identity, you can’t get the Doctor to shut up about Rose. He babbles on about her (leaving you to wonder just how long it’s been since he’s talked, _really_ talked, about her with anyone; somehow you’ve the impression Martha is, shall we say, less than sympathetic). In some ways, it’s a little like old times. Except this Doctor is not _your_ Doctor and Rose is now so far away even _he_ can’t find her. His love for Rose shines through in everything he’s said; the anguish in your old friend’s eyes will haunt you for a long time to come.

But when you ask him the question you’ve been burning to ask ever since you set eyes on the TARDIS in Cardiff (whether he would have left Rose behind, if her exposure to the Time Vortex had done to her what its effects have to you), you get short shrift. The Doctor's eyes are bleak and his voice is cold as he assures you he could and would not have left Rose behind, whatever had happened to her. You flinch at the bluntness of this, and have opened your mouth to reply when Martha comes back with the chips ... and there isn’t any good time to return to it, after that.

When the fact you work for Torchwood comes out, the Doctor’s furious reaction, despite your assurances of how you’ve gutted the organisation and rebuilt it in his (and Rose’s) honour, makes you realise just how different a man he truly is and how many bridges between you are now in pieces. You aren’t sure whether you can find the emotional energy to begin building them again. Not with this Doctor; not without Rose.

So, when you’re asked, you refuse the Doctor’s offer of travelling with him. It breaks your heart to do it (even though he is no longer the man you love), and even then you do it with serious misgivings; you know the Master put the Doctor through the wringer just as much as he’d done to _you_ , just in a different way. The times the Doctor wept at night, and his repeated cries for Rose, stalk your nightmares. But you knew you needed to do it. The Doctor needed to learn that he couldn’t just abandon people, couldn’t just up, leave, and hope for the best.

The Doctor is a broken man, in ways you yourself have never been, and yet you chose to walk away from him at the time he may well have needed you most. At the time, you thought your choice was justified, was the right one. Hindsight is always perfect, though, and you’re no longer as sure as you were.

So you spend your nights sitting up, unable to sleep, in what passes for your office in the Hub and wonder whether, if you keep telling yourself the decision you made was the right one, perhaps someday you’ll believe it.


End file.
